


halfway home

by LovelyLessie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Caretaking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLessie/pseuds/LovelyLessie
Summary: After evading capture by the Garrison's staff, Keith deals with a friend who needs help - and some unwanted guests. (Set during the pilot.)
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	halfway home

**Author's Note:**

> don't even read this if you ship shiro with keith (or any of the other paladins for that matter). any comments implying shipping will get deleted.

Keith pulls back on the throttle sharply and spins to a stop beside the house, dust kicking up into the air as he powers down the engines and the bike settles to the ground. “Oh, gosh,” groans the big guy, whose name Keith still can’t remember; the bike rocks slightly as he sways where he’s perched on the back. “Oh, _man_ , I don’t feel good.” 

“Get off my bike if you’re gonna hurl,” Keith tells him with a glance over his shoulder, and jumps to the ground himself, turning quickly to steady Shiro as he slumps forward. “Hey, man, are you with me? Shiro?” 

Shiro stirs and mumbles something incomprehensible, his eyes flickering open halfway before closing again. Whatever the Garrison medics gave him must have been pretty strong stuff. Keith sighs and shakes his head, pulling Shiro’s arm around his shoulders to help him down from the bike. 

“So, uh, what’s _this_ place?” the scrawny one - Lance - asks, looking up at the house. “Some kinda secret safe house, or what?” 

“It’s where I live,” Keith replies, frowning at him. “It’s just my _house.”_

“Wow,” Lance says. “What a _dump.”_

Fury prickles hot under his skin, but Keith bites his tongue and tries to ignore the jab. “Come on,” he says, putting an arm around Shiro’s back to support him. Fuck, he can feel his ribs through the thin, ragged shirt he’s wearing. What the hell _happened_ to him? “Let’s get inside, okay?” 

He pushes open the door and pulls Shiro over the threshold, moving to kick it closed just as the tiny cadet with the glasses he doesn’t recognize moves to come inside. “Hey, wait,” the kid protests, quickly stepping in to stop him. “What about us?” 

“I didn’t mean _you,”_ Keith says, trying to push him back outside with one hand. 

“What?” Lance protests, scrambling down from the bike to join his tiny friend. “But we totally helped with your rescue mission!” 

“More like got in the way,” Keith snaps. “I came back for Shiro, no one asked you three to get involved—“

“So you’re just gonna strand us out in the desert?” Lance argues, gesturing at the open landscape with one hand. “Where are we gonna go when you live out in the middle of nowhere?” 

“Not my problem,” Keith tells him, shrugging. “You’re the ones who decided to hitchhike with me.” 

“I’m not leaving til I get to talk to him,” says the one in glasses stubbornly, ducking under Keith’s arm to push his way into the house. 

“And we can’t go back to the Garrison,” Lance says, wedging his foot in the door before Keith can slam it shut. “We’re gonna get suspended, or expelled like _you—“_

“Shut up!” Keith snarls, his free hand curling into a fist at his side. 

“Keith?” Shiro asks, his voice thick and slurred as he lifts his head. “Where… what’s…” 

“You awake now?” Keith asks, trying to focus on Shiro instead of the others trying to intrude. “Come on, you should sit down.” 

“The Garrison,” he mumbles. “They need to - I’ve got to tell them…” 

“So, uh,” says the big guy as he appears in the open doorway behind Lance, looking a little unsteady. “What’s - what happens now? What’s the plan? Do we have a plan?” 

“ _We_ don’t have a plan,” Keith says, annoyed. “ _I_ do, and it doesn’t involve any of _you.”_

“Well, _he’s_ obviously not thinking clearly,” Lance says, jerking his head at Shiro. “Iverson just tried to lock him up and he wants to go back there!” 

“Yeah, no offense, sir,” the big one adds, “but any of us going back to the Garrison right now seems like a bad idea.” 

“You don’t… understand,” Shiro manages, trying to push himself upright. “They’re coming, we don’t have much time, I _need_ to get in contact with Flight Command—“ 

“Sir, I don’t know if the Garrison can be trusted,” the little one says, standing up straighter himself. “They hid the truth about what happened to the Kerberos mission—“ 

“Stop!” Keith tells him, glowering. “All of you, stop _talking—“_

He breaks off as Shiro sways and slumps sideways, ducking under his arm again to support him. 

“Look,” he says, “if you all want to stay here for the night, _fine._ But I don’t want you getting in the way, and I _don’t_ want any of you bothering Shiro right now, got it?”

He crosses the room carefully, still supporting most of Shiro’s weight, and helps him to the couch to sit down. 

“Hey, man,” he says, perching on the arm of the couch to rest a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

Shiro stirs a little and groans faintly, trying to lift his head, but if he’s trying to say something he doesn’t manage it. Keith swallows hard. 

“He’s gonna need some time to sleep off the sedative they gave him,” he mutters aloud, more for his own benefit than for the bunch of strangers who are now standing in his living room. “Guess asking any questions is gonna have to wait until morning.” 

“What about the aliens?” the big guy asks, fidgeting nervously. “You know, the ones he said are coming? Here? To _Earth?”_

“What did I _just_ say?” Keith asks, annoyed. “I don’t know any more than you do, and Shiro’s still too out of it to tell anyone _anything._ ”

“I mean, yeah, but,” he protests, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, do something? Tell somebody?” 

“Who?” asks the little one, adjusting his glasses. “ _Who_ is gonna believe us when even the Garrison wouldn’t listen?” 

“Okay, okay, just because _Iverson_ wouldn’t listen,” Lance begins. 

“I thought you didn’t wanna go _back,”_ the big guy reminds him. 

Lance shakes his head quickly. “Oh, no, no, no, no, I don’t. Even if we wouldn’t get court-martialed, my sister would _kill_ me. I’m just saying--”

“Will all of you be _quiet?”_ Keith shouts at the top of his lungs, and the three cadets all fall silent. “Look, I don’t _know_ what’s going on, or what we should do,” he adds after a moment. “What I do know is that my _friend_ needs time to recover, and my _one_ priority right now is to make sure he’s gonna be okay.”

No one speaks, the three cadets all staring at him wide-eyed, and he’s suddenly far too aware that he looks disheveled and run-down, hardly the picture of some kind of hero even if two of them _didn’t_ know him as that kid who lost his mind last year and got expelled from the academy. Not exactly the kind of guy who inspires trust. 

“I’m…” he says, and swallows. “I’m gonna help Shiro lay down. All of you can fight over who gets the couch, or whatever, I don’t care, just - stay down here, okay?”

“Dibs,” Lance says, looking around at the others. The big guy groans. 

Keith rolls his eyes, getting to his feet. “Come on, man,” he tells Shiro softly, taking his arm to pull him up. “Let’s get you up to bed.”

Shiro’s still barely conscious, and he has to lean on Keith’s shoulders heavily to stay on his feet, but with Keith’s hand on his back to support and guide him he’s alert enough to walk, at least, and he only stumbles a few times on the stairs. “Keith?” he groans under his breath as they reach the top, his voice still slurred and heavy. “Is… that you?” 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Keith says, guiding him into the unused bedroom. “Take it easy, I’ve got you.” Their footsteps stir up dust from the floor, and he wrinkles his nose, trying not to sneeze.

“Where… are we?” Shiro asks, and coughs weakly. 

“My house,” Keith tells him, and swallows. “I mean - my dad’s house, you know, where I…”

“You’ve gotta warn them,” he manages, trying to pull himself upright. “They need to know, Keith, if Iverson won’t listen…”

“I know,” Keith assures him. “I promise, we’ll figure things out in the morning, okay? Right now I think you need to sleep.” 

"...Yeah," he agrees slowly, slumping against Keith's shoulder. "Okay."

He all but collapses onto the dusty mattress when Keith goes to help him sit down, and crawls into bed with a groan, struggling clumsily to pull at the covers. Keith tugs the quilt out from under him, swallowing a lump in his throat as he drapes it over Shiro's shoulders. "Night, Shiro," he says quietly.

There's no answer; Shiro's already lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Keith sighs and brushes his hair out of his face, turning away. From the closet he pulls out one of his dad's old t-shirts, examining it in the dim light to determine it's probably around Shiro's size. As quietly as he can, he digs out a pair of jeans and Dad's old vest as well, grimacing at the musty smell of clothes long left untouched. He'll need to wash them first, but Shiro's going to need something other than those rags to wear.

The others in the living room are still awake; he can hear them talking as he creeps back downstairs, but they go quiet before he comes around the corner. At least if they're pretending to sleep they won't try to talk to him, he thinks, and hurries past to the laundry before any of them change their minds about that.

When he’s put the clothes into the wash and started the cycle, he sits down next to the machine and leans back against the cool metal, drawing his knees up to his chest.

In the quiet, with just the rumble of the machine to keep him company, the reality of what’s just happened finally starts to sink in, and he screws his eyes shut as they well up with tears. He’s _not_ going to cry about it, not now, not when he finally knows for sure that Shiro’s okay - and _especially_ not when there are three near-strangers in his living room who could overhear. He takes a deep breath through his teeth to steady himself, lets it out slowly so it rumbles in his chest. He’s not going to cry.

He’d never really thought Shiro was _dead._ Not when the Garrison reported the loss of the mission, anyways, because the upper brass must have been kidding themselves if they thought passing it off as pilot error would fool anyone. But when weeks passed, and then months, with no renewed contact, no sign of anyone on the crew, no more information on what could have happened - a part of him had started to think he was never going to _see_ him again. And now that he’s back, _home —_

Keith’s breath catches in his throat and comes out as a choked sob. _Shit._ He buries his face in his folded arms, tears burning in his eyes. He’s not going to cry, he tells himself, swallowing hard. He’s _not._

A tear leaks through his lashes despite his best efforts to fight it back; he feels it hot on his cheek before it runs down into the sleeve of his jacket. He sobs again and presses a hand to his mouth, biting into his skin to smother the sound.

_Pull it together, Keith,_ he tells himself. _Shiro needs you._ His teeth dig into the heel of his hand until it hurts, until he can feel his pulse in his palm. He takes a deep breath and lets it out before wiping his eyes with the end of his sleeve. He has to be ready to help when Shiro's up - getting him these new clothes is a step, but he'll need to eat, too, and he'll probably still be as confused and frantic as before when he comes around. He's going to need someone around he can count on.

The washer spins to a stop slowly, and he pulls out the change of clothes to throw them in the dryer before he heads upstairs. He can leave them down there for a bit once they're dry if he has to, and he's still much too aware of the three cadets in the living room who he _hopes_ are asleep by now.

At the top of the stairs, he pauses in front of Dad's room, looking around the edge of the door at Shiro where he's sprawled on his back on top of the covers, motionless except for the fair rise and fall of his chest. For a minute he just watches him, tries to keep his own breathing steady despite the tightness in his chest and the lump in his throat. He's not going to cry.

With a sigh he turns away and slinks into his own room, curling up in bed without pulling the covers up. He's done everything he can before Shiro wakes up, he tells himself. The best thing he can do now is wait.


End file.
